Statistics show that in many countries the fleet of cycles and bicycles owned by individual persons are relevant figures. To give some examples, in Italy and France the number of cycles and bicycles that are property of individual citizens amounts to more than 20 million in each country, meaning that there is one cycle or bicycle per 3.5 persons. Similar situations can be found, with some variations, in other countries such as Spain, United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States. In the Netherlands, there is more than one cycle or bicycle per person. This immense fleet of privately-owned cycles and bicycles cannot be ignored when an automatic parking station is built for cycles and bicycles.
Automatic parking stations for cycles and bicycles installed in diverse sites within a city and connected via a centralized information system are generally known. For instance, US 2007/0220933 and US 2007/0239465 disclose apparatuses for automatically renting cycles and bicycles.
The above prior art apparatuses suffer from some drawbacks, among which the most relevant one includes the fact that they are closed systems which are not suitable to serve a plurality of different users and operators.